


Noises off: a conversation in the wings

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Series: Englishmen (and an Irishman) Abroad: Five Men in the Same Boat. To Say Nothing of the Dog.... [5]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:12:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1709549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet chat before a concert, in which Liam pastes on a smile and Harry extols the Zen of Knitting, and the elephant in the room could perhaps use a knitted headscarf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noises off: a conversation in the wings

**Author's Note:**

> Variations on a canon and fugue. I have no more reason to suspect this to be true than do you, and no axes to grind. It is simply a character sketch riffing upon current events and suggesting, without any bashing or criticism (and acknowledging the solidarity amongst the lads), some possible psychological reactions to the latest stramash, the truth behind and beneath which I do not pretend to know.

‘I used to envy you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yah. Hold hard a sec – the decreasing’s dicey here. There we go.’ The needles clacked. ‘I wouldn’t trade with you, mind; wouldn’t trade with anyone. But. Yah. I used to think, well, Payno at least got the sane, sensible one.’

Liam sighed. ‘ _I_ used to envy _us._ Me and you. Still do, I s’pose. But. This is really not going to be pleasant for a bit, anyroadup, is it.’

Harry hummed. ‘It is what – well.’

‘Yeah.’

Harry quirked a small grin. ‘Oh, here’s one: What’s higher than our boyfriends?’

‘Haz –’

‘Yaz and Trish’s meter, just now.’

‘Y- – you doughnut, that’s worse than your knock-knock jokes.’

‘Laugh or shoot yourself in this world, my man. Laugh or shoot yourself. Let’s see … and three purl....’

Liam sighed again. He seemed to be doing a lot of that. ‘Yeah, well, reckon his mum and dad _are_ bloody well browned off. Talked to mine, I did....’

‘Mm?’

‘Oh, me dad’s as bad as you are. Said he reckoned as he knew who it were leaked it to the redtops.’

‘Did he?’

‘Yeah: Lord Oakeshott, he says. Only thing as saved Vince Cable in this news cycle.’

Harry giggled. Then he sobered. ‘All the same. Brilliant ploys and all....’

‘I know.’

‘There are some words you don’t say; there are some words you don’t say if they can be _heard_ as being words you don’t say. So I still envy you, a bit. Having that all over the tabs and the Net and the telly – not that anybody could’ve known, I know that – on the day Maya Angelou died and the new racism study came out....’

Liam didn’t sigh. He winced, if only for the sake of variety. ‘Nialler’s gutted. Standing with ’em, as we all are, but.... Gutted. Don’t matter what Tommo and Zayner were playing at, the _timing …_ stamped all over his charity match with muddy boots, this done. And then – that word. I mean, Our Niall were excited when we got signed; he were chuffed when he got to meet the Biebs and all; he were fair ecstatic playing Croke Park. But you know, well as I do, that the high point of his life with all this were to be meeting Obama; and now....’

‘Yah. It’s not working out just as intended, is it.’ Harry pinned his friend with a sea-green incorruptible look. ‘So: how are _you_ managing? You kept your appointment, I know.’

‘Yeah. Not about to not do, with all this.’

‘And?’

‘I’m all right. No, I am. But.’ He held up his right hand.

‘Steady as a rock.’

Liam raised his left hand and flailed it about. ‘Yeah, but I shoot left-handed.’

Harry fell against him, laughing. After a moment, though, he trailed off. ‘Christ, Liam, we’ll never dare watch _Blazing Saddles_ again after this, either, will we.’

Liam looked away. ‘Reckon not, or not for a bit.’

Harry physically, if gently, forced Liam to look at him, one massive but gentle paw on Liam’s chin. ‘Talk to me, man. Talk to me.’

Liam closed his eyes. ‘Haz.... Yeah. Appointment went well. But. My God, Haz. I want a drink _so_ bad.’

Harry imitated the action of, not a tiger, but an octopus, and hugged him tight. Once more unto the breach.... It was a little touch of Harry in the night. ‘Oh, _Liam._ ’

‘I know I can’t. I’m not barmy, am I. I may be thick, but I bayn’t a complete clarnet. Bay gooin’ ter end up atop a ledge on a skyscraper again: I cosn’t. I’d be jed first. Or kill meself not meaning.’

‘Liam....’

‘’S a’right, Haz, I needn’t to be treated like a babby. ’M not yampy yet.’ He shrugged. ‘ _Feel_ I am, though, sometimes.’

Harry well knew that when Liam retreated into the speech of his childhood, the speech he’d used with his gran and various aunties and uncles, he was in pain: a pain that was itself part of that past which was only partly a refuge. And after all, Cheshire-raised at the last or no, Harry _had_ been born in Redditch and spent his early years in Evesham: not so very far away, really....

He knew, as well, that Liam was perfectly capable of convincing himself that – for all Liam’s own recent steps from his absurdly straight and narrow path of physical culture, strenuous workouts, and, until the not unmixed blessing of the last few years, near teetotalism – Liam was perfectly capable of convincing himself that Zayn had not taken up with him had Zayn not been impaired. Which was a total sodding nonsense and unfair to Liam and Zayn both, as well as being dead wrong on the facts (Zayn wasn’t, actually, high all that often, and he loved Liam utterly when straight as well as when fucked up): but Liam could always believe the best of everyone save himself; and there was still that lonely, hurt, derided and bullied child beneath the level sense, the honed body, the superstar status ... and the recent – not altogether convincing – laddishness that had done Liam no good at all. A child waiting, expecting, with resignation, to be dropped and cast off and discarded for someone better and more interesting; a child who anticipated and braced himself for the betrayal of briefly-had friends and loves. Hadn’t that been behind his desperate attempts – sometimes dangerous and hair-raising attempts – to fit in, to be one of the lads? It had been the same impulse which had driven Liam to take on the paternal role in the early days, to play the sensible one and the spokesman, the anodyne figurehead; to take and exert what he thought was control of things (as if a group with Louis in it were ever subject to any control other than Louis’ own – which was why they were in this position just now, wasn’t it): the impulse to make himself indispensable for fear that they’d dispense with him did he not. And – although Harry’d not for words have ever pointed it out – that impulse of Liam’s, and his success in following just that impulse, was precisely part of what Louis had decided not merely to rebel against, but to lead a revolution against: barricades stormed; Bastille besieged. Louis – Harry was clear-eyed enough to know, love him though he did – saw life too much from the imagined wings of a West End production (yes, show tunes and all); and he ought _never_ to have been allowed to have seen _Les Mis._

And Harry also knew that, if someone were to walk in upon them this very minute as ever was, Liam’d square those rather frightening shoulders, smile, assure the world that things were ‘bostin’, and half kill himself in striving to make everyone believe it so, in defence of his lads – and his lad. As they’d each of them do: solidarity was their watchword. What fretted Harry was the possibility that, sooner or later, Liam _should_ kill himself trying.

‘Mate.... All right. You can’t find relief in a bottle. But there’s always the needle.’

Liam’s head turned so sharply it was a marvel he didn’t snap his neck, and his eyes were wide and wild.

Harry cut him off before he could say it, holding up his wool. ‘ _These_ needles. It’s very relaxing, knitting. Very Zen.’

Liam opened his mouth to speak, reconsidered, and carefully shut it once more.

‘And when I’m done with this scarf … well, I’m not going to _strangle_ Louis with it, but he may get a fuller exposure to a little bondage than he’s comfy with.’

Liam ducked his head and failed to suppress a gloriously unmanly giggle-fit.

‘Or,’ continued Harry serenely, ‘you might knit a headband for Zayn or yourself, _mine_ always look dashing.’

‘Your headscarves,’ snorted Liam, ‘are _not_ dashing – you look like bloody Nora Batty.’

Harry smiled patiently, looking obtrusively Zen. ‘I am at peace –’

There’s a Nemesis which waits upon such rash pronouncements, and Harry ought really to have known that a statement such as that was simply asking for it. Paul – in precisely the temper one might expect of a man who felt betrayed equally by his charges, his employers, and his staff – entered, from the prompt side, half-dragging a Louis defiant with shaky bravado, and trailed by a chastened Zayn and a Niall torn between the overwhelming urge to throw a memorable strop and the overmastering urge to give comfort.

‘All right?’ Paul was curt, but not so much so as not to indicate that Harry and Liam, like Niall, hadn’t a black mark against them in his fabled and much-feared Personal Book of Grudges.

Harry shut his eyes, trying not to show pain, as Liam – in accordance with the prophecy – pasted on a smile for all of them equally. ‘Bostin. Hazza’s trying to get me into knitting.’

It was Harry’s turn to sigh. Silently. ‘Yah.... We’re brill. Are there any bananas?’

Paul shrugged. It is not easy to do so grimly; he managed. ‘I’ll find some. Just, you, for the love of Christ, don’t smoke the fucking _peel,_ eh?’

Harry knew that he and Liam and Nialler didn’t blame Lou – or Zayn. They supported them, wholly; and they knew that this was not what they’d planned for. But he couldn’t quite help thinking, _Liam’s right. This is going to be really unpleasant for a bit._ All the same: the show must go on. Though he couldn’t, quite, any longer remember just why.

 


End file.
